ORGANIC COTTON

NATURAL DYES

NATURAL DYE PROCESS

PRODUCT CARE

Few people realize that most of the toxicity in organic garments today comes from the wet processing of the fabric before it is used in production.  This is simply because the current processing standards for organic materials still allow chemicals to be used in the wet processing steps.  Both "low-impact" and "eco-friendly" dye processes are predominantly chemical processes.  We believe that organic material should be processed naturally, without the use of chemicals.  Below is a chart showing the source of toxicity for an organic t-shirt using chemical processes.

Toxicity Profile of an Organic T-Shirt

Source: ICAC 2001 / Eco Textile News, March 2007

All together, there are about 6 "wet processing" steps used to produce textiles after the fiber is grown.  Even though dyeing is just one of these steps, we do not use any chemicals at any stage of our process.  The conventional textile production process uses approximately 8000 chemicals throughout the process to produce a final textile product. The typical textile process steps are:

• Sizing
• Scouring
• Bleaching
• Dyeing & Printing
• Dye Fixing
• Finishing

Our partner in India has developed and patented a Herbal Dye process that uses only natural plants and minerals for all 6 steps of the wet processing production process.  In fact, the effluent generated from the process is recycled and then reused in the dye process or used to irrigate a garden behind the facility.  Here are some characteristics of our 100% natural, herbal dye process.

Innovations of Herbal Dyeing
	Only natural sources such as flowers, roots, stems, etc are used in all six steps in the process.
	Application uses natural ingredients alone.
	The herbs used in our dye process are purported to have various medicinal properties.  Our process attempts to keep these medicinal properties alive on the textiles.
	Dye fixation is accomplished using natural and harmless resources like harda (high medicinal value), sumack leaves, pomegranate, begar, dhavdi, etc.
	Our process uses innovative ways to standardize the quality and quantity of colors consistently in long running lengths.
	Even, plain dyed colors are possible in quantity.
	Present capacity is up to 2000 meters/day with a large expansion project underway. Mass production is possible by integrating our innovative natural dyeing techniques with conventional equipment while maintaining the natural properties of herbal dyeing.
	Innovative process is capable of dying all natural textiles such as cotton, jute, linen and silk as both woven and knit fabrics.
	Fully sustainable process uses the solid and liquid waste as manure and to irrigate soil used to produce natural herbs.
	Mass production quantities may result in lower cost than existing natural textiles processes.

For a list of the typical herbs used in our dye process and their properties, check out our herbal dye materials page.